The new History documentary project might seem preposterous at first:
Mankind: The Story of All of Us promises to pack the history of humanity into 12
hours.

Yet, unless you’re looking for the complete works of Will and Ariel Durant adapted for
television,
Mankind is not only an enjoyable whirlwind ride through thousands of years but also
manages to be acceptably informative.

The series, to premiere tonight, was created by Nutopia, the production company behind the
documentary series
America: The Story of Us.

The first episode — “Inventors,” sent to critics as a taste of the series — covers the human
race from its beginnings in Africa through the Iron Age and Bronze Age, with stops in Egypt during
the reign of Pharaoh Khufu and construction of the Pyramids, and Athens’ defeat of Xerxes’ Persian
invaders in 479 B.C.

The producers of the series focus on specific developments that had a broad influence on
history.

The “inventors” of the first episode include, first, the humans who fashioned spears for hunting
and to protect themselves, the anonymous woman who 10,000 years ago first realized that instead of
just gathering seeds for food, she could cultivate them to grow more food, and the Ice Age
inhabitants of what is now France who made needles out of animal bone to make clothes for
themselves.

In multiple examples of necessity as the mother of invention, we see how cultivating crops led
to the rise of early cities as places for farmers to sell their produce, and how early trade in tin
led to the more useful invention of bronze and the rise of the Bronze Age.

As the human race defied all the odds and not only multiplied but began to settle more and more
of Earth, conflict became inevitable. War is, of course, deadly and destructive, yet, in the
greater scheme of history, it has resulted in significant developments. As
Popular Mechanics Editor James Meigs puts it, “War drives technology.”

The discovery of iron, the fourth most common element in the world, enabled the creation of
better weapons. Athens and its city-state allies were able to thwart the Persian invaders, despite
being grossly outnumbered, by the use of the phalanx, a shoulder-to-shoulder “human tank” of
advancing Greeks. The invention of cast iron by the Chinese enabled the mass production of
crossbows.

Mankind makes good use of its interviewees, who are informative and camera-ready — such as
chef Anthony Bourdain, military expert Richard Machowitz of
Deadliest Warrior, Dr. Mehmet Oz, writer Sam Sheridan and NBC anchorman Brian
Williams.